I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.

Saturday, August 31, 2013

The U.S. Government
rains drone missiles on civilian human targets anywhere in the world,
continues to operate Guantanamo in the face of universal condemnation,
whitewashed Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and the torture memos, committed
aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, and invests billions to sustain
its unlawful global surveillance capabilities. Still, it has the
audacity to lecture the world about ‘norm enforcement’ in the wake of
the chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Someone
should remind President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry that credibility with respect to international law begins at home and ends at the United Nations.
Sadly, the American government loses out at both ends of this normative
spectrum, and the days of Washington being able to deliver pious
messages on the importance of international law are over. No one is
listening, and that’s a relief, although it does provide material for
those teams of writers working up material for the likes of Jon Stewart,
Stephen Colbert, and the many standups at Comedy Central. Yet, of
course, this geopolitical TV series is no laughing matter for the long
ordeal of the Syrian people.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Editor's remarks:
The two articles by Rob Prince and Dr Ibrahim Kazerooni provide some
good information and a clear perspective on the situation in Syria. The
real objectives of President Obama if he chooses to use cruise missile
attacks on Syria are not the same which he declares openly. His
administration has far more sinister aims in sight to pacify the
American War Mafia, Israeli leaders and Arab reactionary regimes such as
Saudi Arabia. Now another big danger the world faces in case of such
military aggression lies in the shape of unforeseen consequences for the
region and possibly the world.

In fact, the pre-war
scenario of the 1914 is in place and very easily American imperialism
can ignite the flames of world war. We see a real danger of this because
of the reckless militarism of American ruling class. The first thing
any warmonger has to do is to prepare the domestic and world public
opinion, a task not difficult to perform given the enormous propaganda
it uses with the help of the hawkish media to support its efforts to
resolve the conflict in Syria by all means. We who stand for peace
should use all our resources to counter American war plans and its
deceptive propaganda.

“Now we sit and wait while the Washington regime makes its next lethal move. Let us lift our voices in unison to prevent it. ““Before another rush to judgment and “punishment” based on a
presumption of guilt, as in Iraq, this time, let the UN inspectors do
their job: We still don’t know who used chemical weapons in Syria —
regime or rebels. Without UN Security Council’s approval, any military
action by US and its NATO or even Arab allies will itself be illegal, an
international war crime itself. Such an attack will not protect
innocent civilians, but hurt them. US attacks will backfire, trigger a
retaliatory response, escalate the civil war into region or world war.”- the comments of friends on Facebook -

This is the second time in six months that the United States has
accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons. The first time,
Washington was forced to eat its words as international organizations,
including Human Rights Watch, claimed that it was the rebels and not the
government forces which had employed them.

Despite calls from all over the world, not to proceed,
it appears that the Obama Administration is heading towards a major air
attack on Syria. France, UK and Israel will be involved in some
measure, either in preparing targets or in the actual bombing. Syria has
both insisted that it was not the Assad government which used nerve gas
in a Damascus suburb that might have killed as many as 1300 people but
U.S. and Saudi backed Islamic militants who have hijacked the opposition
movement, much in the same way similar elements did likewise in both
Libya and Mali.

The claim that it was the Syrian government that gassed its own
people is wearing thin. Although the Obama Administration continues to
again accuse the Assad regime of using serin gas on its opponents, to
date there is no evidence – none whatsoever – that the Assad government has used chemical weapons.
The Obama Administration appears to be racing against time. The more
time the attack is delayed the more its justification is undermined by
both the facts and worldwide opposition to it.

The MIT professor lays out how the majority of U.S. policies are opposed to what wide swaths of the public want

The following is a transcript of a recent
speech delivered Noam Chomsky in Bonn, Germany, at DW Global Media
Forum, Bonn, Germany. It was previously published at Alternet.

I’d like to comment on topics that I think should regularly
be on the front pages but are not — and in many crucial cases are
scarcely mentioned at all or are presented in ways that seem to me
deceptive because they’re framed almost reflexively in terms of
doctrines of the powerful.

In these comments I’ll focus primarily on the United States for
several reasons: One, it’s the most important country in terms of its
power and influence. Second, it’s the most advanced – not in its
inherent character, but in the sense that because of its power, other
societies tend to move in that direction. The third reason is just that I
know it better. But I think what I say generalizes much more widely –
at least to my knowledge, obviously there are some variations. So I’ll
be concerned then with tendencies in American society and what they
portend for the world, given American power.

American power is diminishing, as it has been in fact since its peak
in 1945, but it’s still incomparable. And it’s dangerous. Obama’s
remarkable global terror campaign and the limited, pathetic reaction to
it in the West is one shocking example. And it is a campaign of
international terrorism – by far the most extreme in the world. Those
who harbor any doubts on that should read the report issued by Stanford
University and New York University, and actually I’ll return to even
more serious examples than international terrorism.

hen
President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his fellow Americans about the
dangers of the military-industrial complex, he did both good and bad. As
a widely respected military leader, he made it possible for ordinary
citizens to challenge the Pentagon’s growing power in so many aspects of
our economy and foreign policy. But, by focusing on the military, Ike
misdirected our attention away from other, often more important segments
of Big Money’s collaboration with Big Government.

No question, the military chiefs, the manufacturers
who supply and then often hire them, and the members of Congress who
take political contributions from the armaments industry or look to
lucrative careers as lobbyists for them all work together as a standing
lobby for incredibly wasteful Pentagon budgets. The same groups also
support the endless fear-mongering, whether of the old Soviet Union and
Red China, the newly capitalist Russians and Chinese, al Qaeda
terrorists, or whatever other threat appears to justify massive spending
and – as we now see – massive surveillance.

But let’s get real. Most of us could make a good case
that Big Oil exercises far more influence on our imperial foreign policy
than do the Big Brass and their merchants of death. Major oil companies
are top Pentagon suppliers, I know, but selling fuel to the military is
not why they try to control the lion’s share of the world’s oil and
natural gas. Nor do most people have the oil companies in mind when they
talk of the military-industrial complex.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Official Washington often
lectures other countries on the need for accountability, especially when
governments have engaged in war crimes. Yet, one of the clearest cases
of a U.S. war crime – the mass spraying of Vietnam with Agent Orange –
has escaped any reckoning, note Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer.

By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer

Aug. 10 marks the 52nd anniversary of the start of the
chemical warfare program in Vietnam, a long time with little or no
remedial action by the U.S. government. One of the most shameful
legacies of the American War against Vietnam, Agent Orange continues to
poison Vietnam and the people exposed to the chemicals, as well as their
offspring.

For over 10 years, from 1961 to 1975, in order to deny food and
protection to those deemed to be “the enemy,” the United States
defoliated the land and forests of Vietnam with the chemicals known as
Agent Orange. These chemicals contained the impurity of dioxin – the
most toxic chemical known to science.

A U.S. military helicopter spraying the defoliant Agent Orange over Vietnam during the Vietnam War. (U.S. Army photo)

Millions of people were exposed to Agent Orange and today it is
estimated that three million Vietnamese still suffer the effects of
these chemical defoliants. In addition to the millions of Vietnamese
still affected by this deadly poison, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers
are also afffected.

Friday, August 09, 2013

Finally, our actions must make
Our wishes horses, so we ride
To embrace every one’s human need;
Let that be the gift of this year’s Eid.
Let illiterate doctrine stay above,
And angry law yield to love.

Let not the husband beat the wife,
Or the man of god misuse the knife.
Let no one ever again be the “other,”
But friend, sister, comrade,brother
Across all faiths and denominations,
Lands, rivers, borders, stations.

Let the Allama bow to Ghalib and Mir,
And the music of the Sufi uplift and bear
Our basest self-righteousness beyond
The hate-filled, scared, sectarian pond.
Let god be found upon the earth,
Dancing to the innocence of mirth.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

As a humanist, I extend my Eid greetings to Muslims and all other
people with any religious or non-religious orientation. Let’s hope all
people of goodwill will strive to uphold human values and struggle
against anti-human forces of religious extremists and fanatics who kill
fellow human beings in the name of their brand of religion or sect in
Pakistan and Iraq. They also terrorise other religious minorities.

We are human beings first and last. Religions and religious
consciousness can also be used to advance human values and human
happiness. Luckily some religious people work for social welfare of
the people and we can be proud of their work. But a tiny minority of
misguided and brainwashed goons is perpetrating random killings.

However, it is unrealistic to think that any government can cope
with these rogues if the people are not motivated to cope with them.
Again, it is the people who can uproot this menace by their
constructive and educational work among the masses.

Saturday, August 03, 2013

In a Facebook comment Rahul Banerjee offered his views on Marxist dialectics that I thought needed my brief reply.

Nasir Khan: Mr Banerjee, as a casual reader of Marx and Marxian
concept of dialectics, I find your views on dialectics interesting on a
number of points. But if I understand you correctly, then your notion of
dialectics seems to me mechanistic and deterministic; it has little in
common with what Marxist dialectics stands for. No wonder the question
of thesis and a ‘matching antithesis’ in ‘natural or social
developments’ you have summed up falls in that category! I don’t know
how you have arrived at the view that for Marx the process of thesis and
antithesis inevitably is ‘progressive’. I have not found anything like
that in my reading of Marx’s texts. What you say does not represent
Marxist concept of dialectics. No, Sir; Marx did not expound such a
view. Another puzzling thing is that you name quantum physics and
molecular biology to elaborate on the
social development of society. In my view any advances in physical
sciences do not lead to the negation of dialectics, which essentially is
a model to analyse social change.

Rahul Banerjee:
what marx took from hegel was his version of dialectics. now this form
of dialectics too is shabby stuff that is not borne out by reality at
all times. there is not always a thesis and matching antithesis in
natural or social development and the synthesis that results even if
there was such a pair may not always be of a progressive kind!! instead
the process of change in the real world is of a very chancy kind and not
deterministic and linear as envisaged in the dialectical method. now
that we have a better understanding of this chanciness due to advances
in quantum physics and molecular biology and the unpredictable
development of society, we need to move on from what Hegel and Marx
could surmise in their day.

Friday, August 02, 2013

The mixing of Islam with the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe
for disaster for the people and the political system of Pakistan. It is
obvious to all of us what people say in matters of faith is full of
controversies, divergent interpretations and inter-sectarian conflicts
that result in much bloodshed and social polarization. While every sect
repudiates other sects in doctrinal matters while maintaining its own
version to be the only genuine and legitimate one!

As long as Pakistan does not follow the principles of a peoples’
democracy and separate religion from politics, more and more disasters
and mayhem will follow. I think, one important step for Pakistani
secular activists is to show the importance of the separation of
religion and the State. When this is made possible then the people
should follow whatever religion or sect they choose or reject in their
personal lives. That should be their option and no one should interfere
with that. The State should be neutral in religious matters. When this
happens, religion (Islam in the case of Pakistan) will stop being a
power that poisons the body-politic of Pakistan as it also does in many
other Muslim countries.